I almost got distracted from working my yearly post around this picture of Mr. EW and I in Moneygall, taken back in 2008 when Brian Cowen was about to become Ireland’s Taoiseach and Barack O’Bama was about to officially get enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination to be President.

President Obama has officially declared March 2011 Irish American Heritage Month. More importantly the White House also announced that the president would be brewing his own beer called White House Honey Ale for St.Patrick’ Day.

Obama, who said he will pay for the beer making equipment himself, has made presidential history by being the first U.S. president to brew beer at the White House.

It seems that Obama is certainly getting in touch with his Co. Offaly, roots although no one is sure if honey ale is brewed in the town of Moneygall (Obama’s great-great-great grandfather is said to have left Offaly for New York in 1850).

I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up raised by his Irish-American mother, his view of the Brits, for example, is very different than the average American. When he gave the bust back to the Brits–the bust of Winston Churchill–it was a great insult to the British. But then if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Dublin with an Irish mother and grandfather, their view of the Irish Republican Army is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.

Now, back in 2008 when we were wide-eyed idealists, I found it notable that both Cowen and Obama were making a big career move at the same time. Both of them, you see, are Offaly men (just like Mr. EW, I have to admit), what the Irish affectionately call “Big Ignorant Fuckers from Offaly.” So at that point, I imagined there was some special Luck of the BIFFO, which would put them both in good stead as they moved forward to lead their country.

But it turns out that’s not what these two rising national BIFFO leaders had in common. Unfortunately, it seems, it was a fondness for banksters.

Rather than make honey ale (!?), I’ve been corning beef for the last 10 days, which my own beloved BIFFO and I will enjoy with some Guinness. May your Guinness and corned beef bring you the luck of the Irish in the year ahead.

33 Responses
to “BIFFOs and Banksters”

A very educated man, the President. I toast his wisdom in calling it honey ale…and in brewing his own. And a wise politician. For it is these little things that other politicians shy away from that will get him re-elected. If only there was more substance to adherence to the Bill of Rights…for the president has always come across as a beer-man but has forgot a lot.

…The House Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on Wednesday asked the Defense Department and its intelligence arm — the National Security Agency — to hand over copies of any contracts they may have signed with HBGary Federal, Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) grilled Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the NSA and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, and Dr. James Miller, Jr., deputy under secretary of defense for policy, on the services the firms provided their agencies.

Miller replied that he would have to check with the Defense Department’s general counsel to “make sure that the provision of that type of information is allowed contractually.”

When Johnson asked whether this meant the contracts might have provisions barring them from being shared with Congress, Miller backtracked and said no, that it would take time to determine all the agencies in the department that have contracts with the companies and decide in what form to provide the information…

Both grandparents on my mother*s side were a mix of those northern peoples, mostly English and Scottish, but some Irish. So, I looked up Shetland, thinking it is English yet might have an image of a sheltie to forward to McCaffrey. But, it turns out Shetland is a cluster of islands in Scotland*s part of the North Sea. Still, as a child I was close to a few kindly Irish people in a New England town where I lived, as well as a charming china blue eyed nonagenarian great grandmother; and learned to appreciate the caring and independent spirit of folks from there. Recently, a relationship brought to mind a quote from James Joyce, whose Finnegan*s Wake was dauntingly vernacularized to my young muse; and discovered he looks quite serious and penetratingly intellectual. I may have some remedial reading to do. Happy St Pat*s.

all the more when i look at the shriveled up pittance of corned beef which was a nice fat, and fattty, five lbs. when i started it cooking. up to 35% water, salt, and spices the label says. i hate paying good money for seasoned water.

I know — it’s an on the one hand but on the other. Most writers are pretty poor, although I learned about that benefit from an interview with Frederick Forsyth, who I’m sure is very rich (and also very English – don’t know whether he still lives in Ireland, but he did move there at one time partly because of the exemption).

OT – As folks might be aware of, today the NYT announced their pay-per-view approach for access to their online website (beginning in the US on March 28).

I won’t bother repeating all their details (check the above link for that), but as I stopped over there just now to see this evening’s news, the NYT provided me with an advertisement from Lincoln that offered a free complimentary online NYT subscription.

I clicked on through, and lo and behold, as a result the NYT has given me free access to their website for the rest of 2011.

I don’t know if they are offering this to everyone who visits, but you might want to stop on by over there to see if you can get the same thing.

obama is profoundly wrong, from a ” protect the nation” standpoint, as he himself surely realizes.

the prez is also profoundly lacking in political courage and
political imagination to scotch the attacks on the bill
of rights,

both in the name of stopping terrorism and in the name of stopping crime (see ew’s posts on “swift”).

balkin also misspecifies the problem: it does not occur out of “need”, real or political.

the growing NSS grows because legislators and presidents authoruze, for god’s sake, gov’t organizations, bureaucracies, to grow and act without any political governor (i refer to a motor-type governor), e.g., the prosecutors in the doj and the investigators in its little brother, the fbi.

one major problem the nation faces is a surfeit of leaders from elite academic institutions, leaders like obama, bush, and jack balkin – none of whom have anything to lose or anything to fear,

as do, for example, those marching in support of bradley manning on sunday.

from elite institutions like harvard law and yale law. a good start to ending the NSS would be to ban any graduate of these institutions of wealth and complacency from any judicial, executive, or legislative position for, say, the next 20 years.

balkin merely says, in effect, “i told you so earlier. see how smart i am? i told you all in 2009 this would be the case.”

he does not ennunciate any strategy to combat the severely unhealthy LEGAL state we have created.

They’re discriminating against Canadians, lowering the boom here early as an experiment or something. It’s like Mrs Thatcher imposing the poll tax on Scotland a year early as an experiment. Wiped out all remaining Tories in Scotland in the next election. :)

…balkin is passive in the face of the nat’lsecstate, much too passive…

Perhaps, and perhaps not. *g*

I can’t, and don’t, speak for Jack Balkin, but I think that in reading him over the years, there is more steel in his spine than one might credit.

That said, my real reason for suggesting folks read his piece is that he did a masterful job in describing what the NSS is and how it is the real US government rather than the kabuki one we get to vote for.

Whether or not he, or anyone else, has a solution to the problem is a whole other can of worms.

Despite the redhair and Irish in my background, I don’t do beer. Closest I come is Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

OT, I guess. No sooner than they get Raymond Davis loose, Obamaco gets wind of a jirga involving tribal elders trying to get mining rights settled, that will be held under the auspices of some local Taliban, and decides what the heck with blowing up 20 or so village elders and miners -after all, they might get one or two Taliban. Drone strike kills between 35-40 or so, most of them guys trying to figure out who gets what from mining.

I understand Obama is going to pay for his beermaking equipment. Any chance we can get him to start paying out of pocket for his drones?

The RSA Security division of the EMC Corporation said Thursday that it had suffered a sophisticated data breach, potentially compromising computer security products widely used by corporations and governments.

The company, which pioneered an advanced cryptographic system during the 1980s, sells products that offer stronger computer security than simple password protection. Known as multifactor authentication, the technology is typically based on an electronic token carried by a user that repeatedly generates a time-based number that must be appended to a password when a user logs in to a computer system…

(My Bold)

A few points:

1. This is a big fookin’ deal!!!

2. SecurID electronic tokens have had the blessing of the NSA for years as an “totally unbreakable” access control technology.

3. All kinds of heavyweight Intelligence Community organizations use SecurID including the NSA, CIA, etc.

4. All kinds of heavyweight corporations use SecurID.

5. All kinds of government and corporate organizations will be shitting really big bricks!

Whomever pulled-off this sophisticated penetration of SecureID to surreptitiously take the crown jewels of one of the world’s premier digital security firms would have had No Problem penetrating potentially less secure networks – like SIPRnet – and crawling everything they have, too.

This doesn’t seem to have been a ‘penetration to destroy,’ but rather a ‘penetration to control.’ The attacker establishes an over-watch position and begins cataloging and analyzing the behaviors of the ‘system under the glass’ until a covert path to secretly controlling the target system is identified.

Information systems without information security can be gamed through virtualization by any superuser secretly operating ‘inside’ the assumed-safe security protocols being used. IOW, the secret superuser is ‘watching’ all the information ‘in the clear’ – everything, including monetarily-leveragable trade secrets – and can therefore secretly use that information for his own benefit.

So, for instance, say I’m the bad guy and I’ve penetrated Apple. I’m watching as they ‘secretly’ pull-together the launch of the iPhone5 and I identify ‘trade secret’ information – such as which suppliers are about to enjoy windfall growth…you see what I mean.

For all practical purposes, modern capitalism exists within the containers of technology. My take on the import of this news from SecureID is that we should actively consider whether Capitalism, itself, has been covertly gamed…

Not to mention the possibility of watching, or even helping, a lowly private take the fall as a conscientiously objecting whistle-blowing leaker – for a ‘system’ that was only ‘assumed’ to be secure, but in actuality was wide open to penetration and manipulation by others all along.

If SIPRnet can be shown to have been vulnerable to penetration like that done to SecureID, then prosecuting Manning would amount to scapegoating someone – who was trying to do the ‘right’ thing – to avoid the potential consequences and implications of a systemic security failure.

“…Not to mention the possibility of watching, or even helping, a lowly private take the fall as a conscientiously objecting whistle-blowing leaker – for a ‘system’ that was only ‘assumed’ to be secure, but in actuality was wide open to penetration and manipulation by others all along.

If SIPRnet can be shown to have been vulnerable to penetration like that done to SecureID, then prosecuting Manning would amount to scapegoating someone – who was trying to do the ‘right’ thing – to avoid the potential consequences and implications of a systemic security failure…”

Thanks, klynn – I’m just riffing off of EW’s original insight from her analysis of the chat logs: that SIPRnet appeared to be riddled with points of vulnerability; and Jane’s emphasis that as many as a million users were thought to have had access to this system.

These vulnerabilities were ‘known’ some time ago, and assurances had been made about getting them ‘fixed’ – when in fact the vulnerabilities persisted all the way through 2010.

Against that backdrop, Manning the alleged whistle-blower on war crimes looks a lot more like he’s un-justly getting the disloyal tar baby treatment instead.

Mistreatment of Manning, imvho, is a form of hippy-punching those of us who take the principled protection of everyone’s civil rights seriously – especially the right to speak-up against human rights abuses.

It appears that it’s exactly the attitude of ‘Loyalty over Duty to Conscience’ – which Manning blew the war crimes whistle on – which continues to persecute him now.

Eire tax: There was a five minute interview with Bloomberg economics writer JDrucker March 17, 2011, who explained how private citizens in the US lack the tax dodge of multinationals, giving two such companies* bookkeeping methods as an illustration a paperwork-based offshore subsidiary method of reducing taxes even when most of a company*s employees actually are inside the US and the principal corporate office is in the US. One of the examples involved a US company which enjoys a reduction in corporate tax from what would be ~45% in the US, to a more advantageous tax burden of ~30% in Ireland. To qualify under Irish and US corporate tax law, the company utilizes a law office offshore in Bermuda, plus a similar satellite address in The Netherlands.

Balkin topic: precedentially, I think that blogpost is straightforward and worth observing. It contains a lot of incisive commentary on the directions presidents have taken in centrist US politics. I am not so sure it is complete or accurate in its depictions ofthe torture memos, Padilla, and Manning. There is a lot of territory to cover in attempting to span those three topics with illustrations based upon Ike, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, CheneyBushYoo, and Obama. I think the post would benefit from companion commentary by at least one of the other principal writers at that website during the DTA, MCA, and wiretap scandal years.